Intelligence gathering

One of the things that really cemented my support for Ron Paul was his stance on intelligence gathering, and how government intelligence activities affect civil liberties. This would not have influenced me four years ago. I live in America, the land of the free. I sometimes disagreed with our leaders on issues of civil liberties in principle, sure. But I never felt the leader's positions on those issues would directly impact large numbers of people. Civil liberties were not a deciding issue for me when voting, and even after Bush's first term I believed Congress would curb his most damaging erosions of the rights outlined in the Constitution.

Damaging erosions, such as wiretapping Americans - without a warrant. The standards for obtaining a warrant are very low - I had a professor who worked in criminal law for a few years and he had never seen a judge refuse to issue a requested warrant. What kind of fishing expeditions are law enforcement officials going on that they can't even put together cases for suspecting a person of wrongdoing?

There are so many other ways the current administration has stolen American freedoms people have written books on the subject. Worse - Congress is unable or unwilling to object to these actions. The past few years have seen me grow more and more scared of my own government.

There are a number of candidates who strongly object to compromising civil liberties in the name of intelligence gathering. But I feel Ron Paul's approach is the best. Other candidates would use government bureaucracy in a way that would generate high-quality intelligence while respecting the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Paul would advocate for Congress to slash government agencies and remove their ability to violate the Constitution for the foreseeable future. Bush's predecessors had no agendas to push the boundaries of the Bill of Rights - how was he able to do so much damage so quickly? Because the bureaucracy was already there.

How to remove this bureaucracy? One at a time. For example, take away the operations wing of the CIA - the wing that has again and again produced blowback that harms American security. Remove its layers of secrecy that allow one man - the President - to lead all our elected officials astray. Turn it back into an intelligence agency that provides information for ALL our leaders - that does not pander to one man, that does not perform damaging operations in foreign nations. And save a bunch of your federal tax dollars - that are currently being spent to make you less safe. Only Paul advocates this, and I believe this is the medicine our nation needs.